It was an idea redolent of compassion. By suing cigarette companies for peddling poison and trying to conceal the evidence, Dick Blumenthal's Connecticut would raise vast sums on behalf of Big Tobacco's victims. They would be provided with treatment for maladies like lung cancer, throat cancer, heart disease and emphysema. Those who had not yet fallen sick could enroll in smoking-cessation programs on the state's dime. Concurrently, steep cigarette-tax increases would discourage smoking. Low-income people would benefit the most: They comprise the lion's share of smokers and, unlike the relatively few wealthy smokers, they can't afford the high cost of smoking-cessation treatment and medical care for the ravages of smoking-related disease.

It was this sort of litigation that made then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a leader among the state attorneys general who sued Big Tobacco during the mid-1990s, a hero in his state. He's now a U.S. senator, probably for as long as he wants to be.

Trouble is, the whole operation was a bait-and-switch scam from the beginning. Remember when Mr. Blumenthal promised 45 percent of the windfall would be spent on smoking-cessation programs, 45 percent on disease treatment and 10 percent on an endowment fund? Connecticut officials never intended to use the money to help poor people quit smoking, and they never have diverted more than a tiny fraction of the torrent of cash for this purpose.

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